The concert where no one played a note

On 29 August 1952, in a concert hall near Woodstock, pianist David Tudor sat at the piano, closed the lid and started a stopwatch. For four minutes and thirty-three seconds he played nothing, opening and closing the lid only to mark the piece's three movements. The work was John Cage's 4'33''.

The audience was furious, convinced it was a prank. But Cage meant every second of it. A year earlier he had stepped into an anechoic chamber at Harvard, a room built for absolute silence, and heard two sounds: a high one (his nervous system) and a low one (his blood circulating). His conclusion: silence doesn't exist.

That's why 4'33'' isn't a mute piece — it's a frame. The music is the coughing, the creaking chairs, the wind on the roof. No two performances sound alike, because the world never plays the same thing twice.